Adapting to climate change

Our region – low lying, with a long coastline and low rainfall – is particularly susceptible to climate change. Water resources are already scarce, and rising temperatures will reduce them further, with the threat of more frequent droughts. Yet at the same time, rising sea levels and more intense rainfall will also lead to more flooding.

These challenges would be significant even with a static population, but our region is one of the fastest growing outside London, with 200,000 new homes expected to be built by 2025 (without factoring in the proposed Oxford-Cambridge Arc) and population growth of up to a million people likely by 2040.

With growth most likely in the areas where supply is most stretched, the risk of flooding is greatest, and the environment most under pressure, the need to adapt to new climate realities is acute.

Our purpose as an organisation is to bring environmental and social prosperity to the region we serve through our commitment to love every drop. To fulfil our purpose we need to respond to the challenges described in our Strategic Direction Statement, one of which is climate change.

In our Strategic Direction Statement, we set four long-term ambitions to help guide our planning - all of which relate to climate change. We have been taking action to manage our key risks from climate change since the 1990s. Despite our long-term efforts to embed climate change into everything we do, we recognise that there is much more to do to make the East of England resilient to the impact of drought and flooding.

Our previous Adaptation Reports (published in 2011 and 2015) describe the progress we have made.

We are in the process of producing our next Adaptation Report which will be submitted to Government before 31 December 2021 deadline.

This report describes how we are embedding adaptation across our business and will contribute to government understanding of our level of preparedness to climate change.

Our draft report is published below and we would welcome feedback here.